Carestream’s Windsor facilities listed for sale

WINDSOR — Carestream Health’s 416-acre campus in the Great Western Industrial Park in Windsor has been listed for sale, but company and town officials are mum about what that sale could mean for the future of the Rochester, New York-based company’s operation in Colorado.

Carestream Health is a worldwide provider of medical and X-ray imaging systems and precision contract coating services. As of the fourth quarter of 2021, it reported 416 employees at its Windsor facility.

In a confidential offering memorandum from broker Cushman & Wakefield that was written in mid-2023 and obtained by BizWest last week from the town of Windsor through a Colorado Open Records Act request, the property at 2000 Howard Smith Ave. E. and 2000 Howard Smith Ave. W. in Windsor was described as containing more than 1.3 million square feet of space, plus water rights and 305 acres of potential aggregate.

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Because “the property is surrounded by significant growth in the area including commercial and residential projects as well as recreational and entertainment opportunities” and is “combined with the property’s expansive nature and water rights,” the memorandum stated that it “provides significant potential for an investor, developer or growing industrial/office user.”

Building C-20, which houses Carestream’s logistics and distribution center, was described as having 392,690 square feet of open warehousing space “well suited for a variety of industrial and flex users.” The building, it said, was constructed in 1971 and “is broken into eight rooms separated by firewalls and includes 19 dock doors attached to Room 12. The back lot includes a truck bay and expansive drive for shipping and receiving.”

Buildings C-40 through C-43, the memorandum said, were built in 1973 and 1975 and total 611,394 square feet, more than half of which is dedicated to manufacturing with warehouse space, offices and labs taking up the rest. Carestream’s work in that building includes film coating and contract manufacturing.

A number of vehicles were parked in both lots early Tuesday afternoon.

Carestream has its roots in the health division of Eastman Kodak Corp. (NYSE: KODK), the iconic manufacturer of film and cameras. Kodak Health Group was sold in 2007 to Toronto-based private equity firm Onex Corp. (TSX: ONEX) for $2.35 billion in cash. Around 8,100 employees transferred to Onex, and Kodak Health Group was renamed Carestream Health.

The Windsor facility survived damage from the 2008 Windsor tornado and got a boost in 2016 when Kodak Alaris, a company independent of Kodak that was founded two years earlier by Kodak retirees based in the United Kingdom, announced that it would close its photographic-paper factory in Harrow, England, the suburban London site where George Eastman built his first facility outside the United States in 1891, and outsource the manufacturing of that paper to Windsor.

Kodak Alaris still has production facilities in Windsor, and signage at its building advertises Kodak Moments, which provides souvenir imaging systems and services for destination attractions such as theme parks, resorts and cruise lines.

Carestream in August 2022 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, telling a bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware, that its $1.03 billion in debt was not sustainable in light of long-term headwinds in the medical-imaging industry. A month later, Carestream announced that the court had confirmed the company’s “prepackaged” restructuring plan, in which Carestream planned to successfully complete its recapitalization process and emerge from Chapter 11 by eliminating approximately $470 million of its debt.

Even so, in May 2023 the Moody’s rating service downgraded Carestream’s credit rating, citing “weaker than expected” operating performance and concerns over its high reliance on the film business, which its analysts predicted “would remain in structural decline for the foreseeable future.”

Still, Carestream on Jan. 10, in a news release issued from Rochester, announced the launch of a new “DRX-Excel Plus X-ray System” that it said would deliver “more productivity and efficiency, higher image quality, and an improved experience for users and patients.”